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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Snacktivity: Cheerio Stacking

As you know by now, we love to do
activities around snack time that wecall
snacktivities. This keeps them busy so they aren't justmindlessly eating and instead putting their minds to
work! In thiscase we are putting
their fingers to work and working on finemotor
skills. We also worked on our math skills by counting thecheerios as we stacked them. It helps reinforce
the one to one numbercorrespondence.
Cheerio stacking is an activity we do often because it is so easy to set up and D, J & E request it
often.

This activity requires minimal set up and you
will probably haveeverything on hand.You will need:- Cheerios- a paper plate or bowl (we used paper boats)- play dough- dry spaghetti noodles (uncooked)

That's it! Only 4 things! And I'm sure they are all things you have onhand already if you have a toddler. Now here’s
what to do:

Step 1: Roll the play dough into a ball. I use
about half a regularsized container and
then put it on a plate or in a paper boat that we get at smart and final.
I like to let D, J & Echoose
their colors.

Step 2: Put a single piece of spaghetti into the
play dough. For younger kids I would break off about a 1/3 of the top or else
it is too tall. Thefirst time we did
this activity I only did one piece of pasta, but wehave since expanded the activity by adding additional
pieces ofvarying lengths.

Step 3: Pour Cheerios onto the plate. Show
your little one how to puta Cheerio onto
the spaghetti noodle. The tricky part of the activityis that they have to be careful not to push too hard or
the noodlewill break. Be prepared and
have extra noodles on hand to avoid anymeltdowns
in case this does happen.

Ready for fun!

So proud of their stacking abilities!

Cheerio stacking is a lot of fun and as a bonus it
has really improved their finemotor
skills. I also love seeing how excited they get asthe stack of Cheerios grows. They enjoy counting as
they put eachCheerio on the spaghetti
noodle. This time they were saying “Oh
wow!” and “Awesome!” as their stack grew taller and taller! I love them!

Jake focusing very intently

Dylan is having fun while stacking his Cheerios

Emma was also very serious while finishing up

Since this is a snacktivity I let them snack as
they go. Dylantypically snacks a lot
before he really gets into the activity, butonce he gets going he can build quite the tower of Cheerios!
They love to add Cheerios to all the different
spaghetti noodles and itlooks like an
abstract art project when it's completed. However, we finishour Cheerios throw out the noodles and put the play
dough away fornext time!